Engaging Vulnerability invites you to an open lecture by Cris Shore (The University of Auckland & Stockholm Centre for Organisational Research, Score). The lecture is presented in cooperation with the multidisciplinary research network “Higher Education as Research Object” (HERO) at Uppsala U.

ABSTRACT

The health of many academic disciplines like education and anthropology has long been connected to their position as university-based subjects. However, changes in the political economy of higher education, including cuts in public spending, rising student fees, the privileging of STEM subjects over the arts and humanities, and the proliferation of new regimes of audit and accountability, pose challenges for the social sciences as well as the university itself. In countries such as Britain, Australia and New Zealand, academics are being urged to be more entrepreneurial, to focus on ‘impact’, and to engage proactively with business and finance in order to create a more commercially-oriented ‘innovation ecosystem’. The idea of forging a ‘triple helix’ of university-industry-government relations has become part of the new common sense that now drives government policies for higher education. But how positive is this supposed symbiosis between universities and external financial interests? What are the costs and benefits of this collaboration? And what are the implications for the future of the public university?